What is a master plan?

“A master plan is a blueprint for the future of the community. It is just a plan. The plan itself has no legal basis other than when the planning commission adopts the master plan, which is their legal duty to do,” said Bobbe Fitzhugh, of Community Builders, Inc., the company responsible for developing the Saratoga Master Plan.

The master plan shall be adopted by the planning commission according to their statutes, however once it is adopted, the town and the planning commission have control over what they do with the recommendations made by CBI.

The master plan can and should have a number of different components, Fitzhugh said, including transportation, utilities, land use, open space, town boundaries and growth. The plan looks at where these elements currently stand, and where they could and should go. The only things that are required to be in conformity with one another are the land use plans and zoning codes. Changing them would require an amendment to both the zoning codes the land use plan.

If the street master plan determines that a street should be built in a certain location and a developer comes in and wants to put it in a different location, there would need to be an amendment to the street master plan. However, there is nothing saying that the street cannot go in the other location.

“Circumstances change. Developers have different ideas of things. The town 15 years from now may change their minds,” said Fitzhugh. “But we have a better idea of what we want our community to be if we have it written down somewhere.” Having the plan developed ensures some level of progress by preventing different councils from taking the town in different directions, year after year.

When the community determines their goals, CBI will make recommendations of how to make those goals possible. Fitzhugh insists these suggested methods are simply recommendations based on the expert advice of CBI.

The goals are determined by surveys and community input, evaluated by the predominant opinions of those filling out the surveys. “That (recommendation) does make it so until the town council adopts that action step,” said Fitzhugh. “None of the things in the action plan are actions until they’re adopted, until they’re implemented … it’s just a plan.”

Fitzhugh said, “The community input is really critical to deciding what the Saratoga Town Council is going to want to do with this plan because they understand that … they’re representing this community.”

The surveys are CBI’s method of gathering public input, and the questions are geared to find out whether or not a certain topic is something to be focused on in the plan. The ideas that rise to the top are the ones that determine the themes of the plan, Fitzhugh said.

While public input is a vital part to the plan subsequent growth in the community, Fitzhugh said that not all decisions are based on what community members want.

“There are other factors aside from whether the community wants it. If they can’t afford it, it’s not going to happen anyway. If it’s legally not possible, if it involves getting somebody’s buy-in that isn’t going to happen.” Fitzhugh added that there were matters of feasibility involved as well, where CBI may step in and cite experience of plans past where things simply did not work in a way that Saratoga citizens suggest.

Implementation with honest answers from the public and local authorities is vital to the future of the community, as well as a firmly established vision statement for the goals of Saratoga. “If you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know when you get there,” said Fitzhugh.